Morbid Metamorphosis

by Lycan Valley Press

  If only he could control his wife with one of those. He would be able to turn her on whenever he wanted, turn her volume down when she got too loud, and even mute her voice entirely if the monologue grew too dramatic.

  Where is she? Selfish cow! I go to all this trouble to wish her a happy birthday and she can’t even be on time. She’s probably blabbering away to Karen what’s-her-name, they’re always chatting together and complaining about the price of avocados or how difficult it is to stick to the latest diet. I did this for her. Where is she?

  Dean let out a long sigh and looked at his phone. It wasn’t ringing. He thought about calling Janice again and leaving another message, not quite as sweet as the last one. It was so tempting.

  Twenty past eight. It was twenty past bloody eight and she still wasn’t there. Dean was getting hungry. He had expected that by then they would have finished a few glasses of wine and be started on a nice romantic dinner, perhaps with candles on the table and all that sappy jazz.

  The wine! He had forgotten to put the bottle of sauvignon blanc in the little fridge under the bench. It was still in his suitcase. If he hurried, it would be nice and cool when she arrived – whenever that was.

  His phone was sitting there, inconspicuous beside the television.

  Why hasn’t she called? Is she doing this on purpose? I’m being punished. I don’t know why but I’m being punished... for sure! Dean tried to imagine why she would want to torture him. He knew that he hadn’t been the world’s most pleasant husband with all his stress and fatigue. He had been increasingly cranky of late and had tended to let his work pressures interfere with his private life, but he didn’t think he deserved to be stood up by his wife of twenty-five years. He had told her to arrive around six, but the hands of the clock on the butterfly and daisy wall were imperceptibly sliding their way towards eight-thirty.

  She knew that tonight was her night. She should have appreciated that. If she didn’t come soon, it would be too late to go out for dinner and they would find themselves going to bed hungry. How romantic that would be! They would both be tired and hungry and would go to sleep in the rosy bed without drinking a glass together and without making love.

  He stepped over to the window and, pushing the spectral curtains apart, looked outside. He cupped his hands around his face but still couldn’t see much. It seemed as though there was nothing but void out there beyond the hotel room. He was alone in the room and the world no longer existed beyond it.

  He wanted to rip the curtains down from their rod. He yearned to tear the wallpaper away while he was at it. Above all, he still wanted to smoke a cigarette. He wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from lighting up for ever, and when he eventually succumbed to temptation, it would be entirely her fault

  Damn her, the bitch!

  Standing in front of the window to nothingness, two seconds away from going to his suitcase and pulling out the packet of cigarettes he couldn’t help himself from keeping with him, Dean Latham did something that would change his life.

  He tried to call his wife again.

  The phone rang, and this time, he didn’t find himself being answered by her recorded voice but by a real voice.

  Only, it wasn’t Janice’s. It belonged to a man.

  ‘Who’s this?’ the voice asked.

  Dean didn’t know what to say for an instant.

  The cheating whore! He had suspected that Janice had a lover, but there had never been any proof to confirm it.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he found himself repeating the stranger’s question, mimicking him. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I asked you first...’

  ‘Where’s Janice?’

  ‘How do you know Janice?’

  Dean was definitely going to smoke a cigarette, and he was also seriously considering redecorating the hotel room in a most violent fashion, but first he had to tell this arrogant wife snatcher what he would do if he ever laid hands on him.

  ‘Listen to me! If you want her, you can bloody well have her. But if we ever cross paths, you had better be wearing clean underwear for the coroner’s sake!’

  He hung up.

  The void outside the window seemed even more foreboding than before. Everything had changed.

  He would no longer wait anxiously for his wife. He knew that the end had come for their life together. He still felt hungry, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to eat. He wouldn’t be able to sleep either, not after what he had just discovered.

  He went to find his packet of cigarettes.

  It was well after half past nine when Dean finished smoking his third cigarette. Ever since the phone call, he had been strolling back and forth across the hotel room like a caged animal. He could no longer smell the horrible pot-pourri odour that had filled the room and he was very glad of that. A line of ash marked the floor from the window to the door, evidence of his incessant pacing. The hotel manager wouldn’t be impressed in the slightest once this blatant infringement of the rules had been brought to his attention, but Dean had other concerns on his mind.

  He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, yet he knew that he had done something to deserve this harsh treatment. There was a nagging notion inside his head, trying to remind him that as painful as the whole situation was, he didn’t have the luxury of pretending that he was an innocent party.

  What did I do to deserve this? I’ve done something wrong. I made her stop loving me.

  It was the first time he had admitted that simple truth to himself.

  He kept walking the line of ash from the door to the window, passing back and forth between the bed and the blabbering television.

  The hotel room was his realm. It was both his safe haven and his cell. The hallway beyond the door and the void beyond the window meant nothing to him.

  All the same, he knew he would have to leave in the morning.

  The phone rang and he almost jumped out of his skin. It was Janice’s name that appeared on the screen. She wanted to speak to him. He didn’t know what to do, answer or ignore. There really wasn’t any point in her calling him. It was obviously over for them. But then again, after so many years of marriage and two children together, it couldn’t just end like that. They would have to see each other again. But he had better not see him, the man to whom the voice belonged. Dean had meant what he said.

  He was about to answer the phone when it stopped ringing. He had hesitated too long. It didn’t matter. All he had to do was call back… but did he really want to?

  Door... window..., corridor... nothingness, he couldn’t stop pacing.

  ‘Damn it all to hell!’ he cursed aloud.

  He stopped walking the ash line and strode purposefully over to the fridge. He pulled out the bottle of sauvignon blanc. It glowed in the dim light. He knew that drinking was no better a way to solve problems than smoking, but he didn’t have the self-control to resist, not trapped and confused in a grotesquely decorated hotel room with a double bed all to himself.

  The corkscrew was in his suitcase. He rummaged through his belongings and pulled it out, but before he could get back to the bench to open the bottle, it slipped out of his hand. There was some kind of liquid all over it.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked himself as he picked it up.

  Holding the corkscrew up to the light, he noticed that it was covered in some kind of viscous substance. It certainly wasn’t wine

  For some reason, he remembered his shower. He had washed himself thoroughly before leaving the house – more thoroughly than usual. He had scrubbed himself red. But he hadn’t washed the corkscrew.

  As he studied the object closely, he noticed a movement beyond its spiralling spike. He changed his focus, and could hardly believe what he saw

  Janice had arrived! She was in the hotel room, standing right in front of him.

  He stumbled backwards and collapsed on the floor, the corkscrew still clasped tightly in his hand. Shock had stolen his memory earlier that evening and given it to the voi
d, and now, the corkscrew had returned it to him.

  He remembered those terrible words, his wife’s last.

  It’s too late for all this nonsense, Dean. I’m not going to spend the night with you in some cheap hotel. In fact, I’m not even prepared to spend one more night with you right here in this house. I’m leaving you!

  He leaped to his feet and lunged forwards, stabbing the corkscrew at his terrified wife with quick, violent jabs.

  Dean was still in this state when the door to his room was opened without warning.

  Two men stood there and stared at him wide-eyed. One of them wore a police uniform and the other was in plain clothes. Both had their guns drawn and raised, but they didn’t shoot. They simply watched, trying to understand why the suspect was attacking thin air with a corkscrew.

  The detective spoke firmly, using the voice from Janice’s phone, but Dean didn’t pay him any attention at all. He just kept stabbing his corkscrew into Janice’s neck, over and over again. The bloodied metal spiral twisted in and out of her with each thrust and tug until it slipped from his grip. He dropped to his knees. Then, as the policemen moved in, he closed his eyes and stared into the void.

  PAPER TRAIL

  Daniel I. Russell

  GEORGE Sutton, the whip of a man who ran the Greenwick Bank, sat his bony rear on the park bench. He placed his frosted glass of cider atop the worn wood, leaning over the generous servings of hotdogs, fruit pies, and sandwiches.

  “They caught him, you know,” he said with a knowing wink. “Over in Newport.”

  Doc Harrington shrugged. He had spent the evening watching the local children chase butterflies around the bandstand while a quartet played within. The evening had descended warm and a little humid but not unpleasantly so. The close air held the delicious scents of baked pastries and cooked meats. The Doc had certainly eaten his fill. Greenwick needed little excuse to convene on the common for barbecues, picnics, and music, and Harrington relished seeing his patients away from the surgery. No one healthy came to see him. That all changed on these balmy, late spring evenings. They all had the time and the smiles to go with it.

  To spend the last few hours of daylight with this weasel of a man felt a waste, no matter what gossip he carried.

  “Didn’t have a chance,” Sutton continued, still in his black suit from a day of counting other people’s money. He sneered, and his thin moustache formed a hook around his lips. “Always said they would. Our own Sheriff might have let the thief slip through his fingers, but they don’t play around up in Newport, no sir. Paper trails, you see, Doc. Every man, no matter how careful they think they are, leaves a paper trail.”

  Despite his disliking for the banker, Harrington found his comments quite apt. He had, of course, heard the rumours that Dean Derringer, a man who had been on the run through Rhode Island since winter, had been apprehended a few towns over, yet it wasn’t the fugitive he pondered.

  Yes, paper trails, he thought, peering past Sutton to the folk milling around tables and barbecues. Records. Histories. Stories.

  Sutton would have his own written tales of their friends and neighbours. Books full of figures detailing every mistake and every win. If you saved or spent, put away every last cent or blew it all on booze and women, Sutton and his ledger had the story in black and white…possibly red in some cases. Sheriff Lee’s files were stored away in a dusty basement below the station, statements of your crimes and misdemeanours, should your past be less than clean. Harrington himself had access to the most intimate of stories: folders containing complete lives from birth weight to cause of death. Between the three of them, characters could be sketched without meeting, Greenwick drawn up on paper, all secrets lain out in ordered lists.

  Greenwick prided itself on being as American and wholesome as apple pie, but beneath the sweetened crust, some of the apples fermented, rotten and bitter.

  Unlike this delicious specimen! Harrington cut a generous slice of pie from one of the many dishes on the table.

  Sutton, ignoring the food, leaned ever closer. “Good job too. I hear Derringer didn’t just dabble with thievery, Doc. Praise the Lord he didn’t indulge in his other alleged…interests while he passed through. This town is too good a place to have such evil walk its streets. They say Derringer had a very strange collection of items on his person.”

  “Indeed,” said Harrington. He wiped his moist brow with a handkerchief and dug into his pie. “But it’s all over with now, George.” He lifted the loaded spoon to his lips. “So let’s not waste a delightful evening dwelling on such matters, eh?” He plunged the sweet apple pie into his mouth and grinned.

  “I wish I shared your cheery mood,” said Sutton and sipped his cider.

  Harrington’s smile faltered. “In my line of business, George, you have to stay cheery. In the sixty years I’ve been the doctor here I’ve seen too many good people snatched away. Use what you have left, that’s what I always say.”

  Sutton didn’t appear to be listening. Something over by the bandstand had caught his attention.

  Harrington placed his spoon next to the unfinished pie. Everyone around him had stopped their eating and chatter and all stared to the centre of the common. Even the band had stopped playing. The evening hung with a sudden and eerie quiet.

  “Is that…” Sutton squinted in the late glare. “Is that Tommy?”

  Harrington peered between the silent revellers.

  Shambling across the grass, Tommy Gleeson, the only child of Pam and Frank who ran the diner, held the attention of the town. He stared straight ahead, ignoring his audience, almost falling over his own feet.

  What cruelty is this? thought Harrington. To get a boy of nine drunk!

  While the Gleeson boy was a pleasant enough child, always polite and helpful at the diner, he still indulged in the hijinks of the young. Harrington had prescribed ointment for a moderate burn on Tommy’s hand a few summers ago, a result of the boy’s first cherry bomb. He imagined some of the older kids, a pilfered bottle of sweet cider hidden among them, watching the fruits of their labour staggering across the common.

  “Where’s the Sheriff?” boomed a voice. Phigis, the butcher, judging by the heavy Scottish accent.

  “The Sheriff?” said Harrington, turning in his seat with a chuckle. “What are they planning to do? Arrest the Gleeson boy for being drunk and disorderly?”

  Sutton placed his hand on Harrington’s shoulder, gripping the flesh hard with talon fingers. “Your old eyes are failing you, Doc.”

  “Nonsense! I can see what’s going on perfectly well.” Harrington stood from the bench and grabbed his cane. “I pulled the boy from his mother. I’ll not have him tormented over some prank.” He limped away, the tip of his cane digging deep into the soft ground, heading for the bandstand.

  The people of Greenwick stood rigid, locked into place like museum exhibits, only they did the gawping, not those that walked among them.

  “Tommy!” Harrington called, waving his free hand. “Hold up there.”

  As he neared, meandering through the onlookers, he squinted behind his spectacles. Something had the town spooked, something more than the drunken gait of a child. They’d all had their first drop of alcohol at some such age. So why such outrage? Had the town grown so high and mighty with its prosperity?

  “Tommy,” Harrington gasped, working his cane hard and fast to keep up. No one moved to help him. It felt like chasing a rabbit though a copse of trees. “Tommy! Wait!”

  The boy halted, his back to the doctor, body swaying, head twitching.

  “There we go,” said Harrington, finally able to stop and catch his breath. “Come here, boy. We can get you sorted out.”

  “Gub nbb grlm naabl e uh nuuurrlathotep…”

  Harrington smiled and shook his head. The boy really had put some away.

  “Where’s the Sheriff?” someone called from over near the barbecues.

  “Come on, Tommy, before Sheriff Lee arrives. Let’s get you back to my surge
ry and have some water inside you. I promise you’ll feel better.”

  Tommy slowly looked back over his shoulder. Tears streamed down his face. His red-rimmed eyes were those of a heavy alcoholic, not a child indulging his first taste. Tiny blood vessels burst in his sclera, scarlet poppies blooming on a field of snow. He mumbled once again.

  “I can’t understand you, Tommy.”

  The boy turned, and Harrington finally understood the shock of the town. Blood coated the front of his T-shirt, shorts, and arms.

  “There are worlds in there…” He sighed.

  Harrington took an unsteady step away. “Where’s the Sheriff?” he yelled.

  ***

  Everyone had been sent to their homes. Only a fool would stay out and test the Sheriff’s patience. Rather the women stay sitting by their telephones indulging in Chinese Whispers while the men indulged in a different game, sipping stiff drinks in front of the television, playing ignorant. Children were sent to bed early, too young to know what had transpired, but old enough for it to affect their dreams.

  Harrington sat in the passenger side of Sheriff Lee’s squad car, gazing out through the windscreen at the glowing lights of lounges and bedrooms. Such fun, just a short time ago. He imagined the barbecues remained hot, and the cider still cold, yet the feel of the town had changed following the appearance of the Gleeson boy

  Even the night had approached quickly, bringing with it a low mist that had swept over the houses one by one. Strange weather for this time of year, thought Harrington, used to seeing drifting fogs in fall as the cold weather descended. The moon, hidden by sudden clouds, lent the sky a ghostly luminescence. The doctor hoped for a storm to clear the air.

  He hadn’t noticed the arrival of the Sheriff until the driver’s door opened. Lee’s tall frame slid into the seat.

  “The boy’s resting. Didn’t take much. He’s still muttering that garbage.”

  Harrington sniffed. “Shock. That isn’t his blood. I’d say the boy got close to something pretty horrific. Any news regarding Pam and Frank?”